By Rio Pisony
“Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.” – Brené Brown
Many of us avoid hard conversations to reduce the chance of our ego getting hurt. Developing a trusting relationship with your colleagues, employees, or clients is UNCOMFORTABLE. How does that saying go? If it was easy, everyone would do it. Bringing heart back into business begins with taking a daring step: being yourself at work.
Kellie Garrett, PCC, ICD.D, CDWF, and IABC Fellow, continued her Nov. 15 workshop into the lunch hour, clarifying what it means to be yourself at work.
You can’t show up to work with everything “hanging out.” It’s not talking about not showering for three days, wearing the same shirt from yesterday with food still on the collar, although, maybe that’s happened once or twice.
Being yourself at work means living by a set of values that we communicate clearly and act upon, even if those values open us up to being vulnerable. We may not all be professional leaders, but we have the choice to show up, be seen, and live bravely, which can be infectious with colleagues.
Remember a time when you asked a question in a meeting you thought everyone knew only to open the flood gates of questions from your colleagues? Congratulations on living bravely!
Every person has a part to play in culture. Even if culture is still a work in progress, model the values in how you get your work done, especially during times of problems and stress. Courage can be learned with practice; it starts with giving yourself permission to do so.
Who are you when you dare to be yourself at work? Are you funny, a good listener, a challenger? Let us know!
We want to say thank you to Kellie for joining us for this workshop and luncheon. If you would like to learn more about Kellie, you can visit her website or follow her on Twitter @KellieLGarrett.
We want to give a huge shout out to our co-directors of professional development, Tim Shaw and Natasha Cousin for planning this great event. And of course, a final thank you to our sponsors, IABC Canada West Region for helping us bring Kellie to Calgary and CSR Strategies for securing our event space at Ranchmen’s Club.
